Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

6:18 PM, Sunday September 27th 2020

Drawabox lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/Fr6T2sH.jpg

Post with 28 views. Drawabox lesson 1

Pain.Quite a lot of it in lesson 1.

If you are wondering why lesson 1 is in a V5 HI-TECPOINT pen.It's because i thought that was a fineliner which, to my dismay,it wasnt.That's probably why i was contemplating whether or not to post this or redo the whole of lesson 1.I took soo long in deciding that i am almost done in the 250 box challenge(which has its own fair share of problems i could have avoided if i looked at anybody else's work or had some sort of common sense).Please forgive me for my lack of common sense and mistakes.

3 users agree
6:58 PM, Sunday September 27th 2020

Something seems to be wrong with your submission; only Superimposed Lines, Ghosted lines, Ghosted planes, Ellipses in planes and Tabled Ellipses are present. Can someone else second this?

2:49 PM, Friday October 2nd 2020
edited at 3:18 PM, Oct 2nd 2020

ah.some of the pictures I sent didn't upload.that is my bad.ill try and add on the images if I can.

Edit:here is the 2nd part.It should have all of the other things that werent shown.

https://imgur.com/a/xFWtjiS

edited at 3:18 PM, Oct 2nd 2020
2 users agree
11:08 PM, Sunday October 4th 2020

Thanks for uploading the rest of your work, let's get started:

Superimposed Lines:

These are mostly okay. Lines seem to be confident overall, though I will say that some of them seem to be "course correcting" a little as they go on. Focus on keeping the stroke confident and consistent. That is to say, make sure that the line is straight in one direction. It shouldn't be changing trajectory or wobbling at all. Continue to work on and improve getting your lines straighter (and less arcy). That should come with time and practise as long as you keep this in mind. I would just note that your Just be careful to avoid fraying at the start of your line, that seems to be a bit of a problem on your curved lines. Remember to take your time lining up your pen before you make the stroke.

Ghosted Lines:

There are a couple of things to work on here (which by the way is perfectly fine). Firstly I'm slightly concerned about the wobble in your lines. Whilst they're all accurate, they're almost all wobbling. Some lines have lots of small noticeable wobbles, whilst some others have longer, subtler wobbles. It looks like you're prioritising accuracy over confidence, even if you don't mean to. You need to get these lines to be Confident and straight above all else. It could miss the mark by a mile, but that is infinitely better than having the line wobble and hit the target. Perhaps it might help you to focus on reaching "level 1" before you worry about anything else to do with your lines: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/levels . This is by far the most important piece of advice I can give you on this section, so whilst I add these extra critiques (as I believe they are important) I want you to divert your primary focus to my first point of critique before you worry about these extra points. With that said, I'd also like to point out that some of your lines arc slightly. This isn't too big of an issue, just keep it in mind and try to focus on counteracting that motion. A lot of the lines seem to miss their starting points, which implies you may be rushing your lines a little to "capture" the rhythm of your ghosting. I would recommend taking care to hit your starting points when you draw your line and then proceed to draw it as straight and confident as you can.

Ghosted Planes:

Same critique as the ghosted lines, with the addendum that you should take a picture of each exercise as you complete it, rather than do it all after you've finished. The planes are a little harder to critique due to the ellipses being present. It will be essential to bear this in mind when you get to lesson 2, as some exercises become impossible to critique after they're repurposed for another exercise.

Tables of Ellipses:

This was a good attempt; your ellipses are, on the whole, quite confident. Sometimes they wobble a little, and there is a tendency for them to overlap and take eachothers space, but it seems you've prioritised getting them confident over making them fit which is good. Keep drawing through your ellipses more than once. You should get these nailed with practise.

Ellipses in Planes:

This exercise gets a bit harder with the added dimension of trying to draw an ellipse in the confines of the plane. You've done decently overall, though it is noticeable that the quality of your ellipses does dip slightly; they're just getting a little more wobbly and uneven as they try to fit the confines of the ellipse. I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with your understanding here, you just need more practise drawing ellipses. I highly recommend incorperating Ellipses in Planes into your warmups, and do them regularly. This will be so helpful for you when you do Lesson 2.

Funnels:

This is a tricky exercise, I struggled quite a bit on it when I did Lesson 1, so it's okay to have trouble with it. With that said, there are some problems we need to address. Your ellipses stay within the bounds of the funnel, so that's good, but they're quite uneven. Some of them fail to form a coherent ellipse, whilst others find themselves to be wonky. My guess is that this is just an issue in line confidence, since you've shown you can produce some decent ellipses under different conditions. The added dimensions of this homework were probably challenging for you. I recommend keeping a focus on ellipses, as well as developing confidence in your line making, in your future warmups. I also noticed that some of your ellipses are going off at odd angles that don't align with the rest of the funnel. Remember that you need to keep them all aligned in the same way. When you practise this exercise again, I would recommend holding off on making the outer ellipses progressively wider. That's an extension task to make the exercise more difficult. You should focus on trying to nail down the fundamentals of this exercise first. Keep the ellipses all aligned at the same angle and get them to be clear and confident.

Plotted Perspective:

I'm a bit perplexed as to why you chose a different format to lay out your plotted perspective frames, instead of the one in the lesson. Some of your frames seem quite small and finnicky, and I feel that working with all of these different sizes and proportions detracts from the real aim of this exercise at this stage. Keep to the example homework provided. Also, some of your boxes seem to not be plotted back to the vp? I presume you might have lined up a ruler and then only drawn the line of the box, but you shouldn't do this. Follow every instruction uncomfortable gives you, even if you feel that it's silly or unreasonable. There's always a good reason.

Rough Perspective:

This is a difficult exercise, it's not expected for students to nail the perspective right away. I think you made a good attempt at getting the perspective right on this. However I will proceed to re-iterate a highly important point. FOCUS ON GETTING YOUR LINES STRAIGHT AND CONFIDENT. DO NOT LET THEM WOBBLE. FORGET ABOUT ACCURACY, EVEN IN AN EXERCISE LIKE THIS. CONFIDENCE >>>>>>>>>>>> ACCURACY. Imagine that I'm standing over you menacingly with a giant fineliner, prepared to execute you in front of a crowd of students if you try to make your lines accurate but compensate on confidence as a result.

Rotated Boxes:

This is actually really impressive. I'm very impressed with what you've produced here, big congrats.Though the lines are wobbling again :P

Organic Perspective:

Firstly, line confidence ( I will continue to batter this point into the ground). Otherwise, this is a hard exercise and it's pretty much expected that students will find it difficult. At the moment I don't think it's too important to worry about this exercise, as the reasons for it involve foreshortening and some theory with perspective that aren't too relevant at this stage. Right now you need to focus on your linework, this stuff can come later.

Next Steps:

I'd like to see you do the Ghosted Lines exercise and the Ghosted planes exercise again.

Focus on getting the lines straight and confident, read through the notes again if you're confused or struggling on how to do this.

We're going to try to aim to get at least half (or more!) of all your lines to be Straight. Don't give a single worry to how accurate they are, just get them straight.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:18 PM, Monday October 5th 2020

https://imgur.com/a/SYqJeUq

Here ya go.

I think i did a tiny bit better but some lines are still a bit curved or are not straight.

3:24 PM, Thursday October 8th 2020

Yeah, you're looking a lot better here. You're correct in identifying that some of the lines are a bit curved, and some of them are a bit wonky, but overall this looks a lot better.

I think you've understood the importance of getting the lines straight, and most of them are quite good. I think you'll get there as long as you keep practising this linework

Next Steps:

Keep practising your linework, don't let these skills deteriorate

Move on to the 250 box challenge and use what you've learnt here.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
1 users agree
9:04 PM, Sunday September 27th 2020

First, i think this work is good and workable but i think you left some space on the superimposed lines exercise lol

Second, for the pen it is mentioned that it is ok for the homework of first lesson to be done in any pen so go on and publish the rest of it

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